Developmental Levels of Mental and Spiritual Health

inquiry & integration

Inquiry: What emotional states are you least in touch with in your daily life? (refer to Introspective Guides on feelings and needs/states)

Personal Integration: This practice can be done alone or with a friend, lover, or counselor. Take one to five minutes or longer to contemplate and answer the question. When done with another, it is essential that the listener remains neutral and encourages you by repeating this inquiry as needed to help maintain focus. Scan your day, and notice the times that seem most cloudy when it comes to your inner experience. You might notice as you do this exercise that sometimes being in vague, enduring, downcast moods, often are predecessors to struggles in your personal life. This makes it important to give more attention to emotions and moods that often go unrecognized. It will become clearer that this is a key in learning how to identify your needs, and changing that difficult state into a focused intention to care for yourself and others.

Inquiry 2: What qualities that create a sense of well-being and wholesomeness do you most lack? These could be qualities like humor, tenderness, strength, peace, fulfillment, inspiration, trust, love, or empathy? (for a complete list refer to the Introspective Guides on needs/qualities)

Personal Integration 2: Follow the same instructions as above in the monologue or repeating question format. It is a very helpful and humbling experience to deepen our understanding of where we most need to grow. Let the emphasis be on deepening the focus and intention to evolve, rather than self-criticism. This humility is good for all of us as it allows us to stay more open and receptive to seeing our blind spots, and appreciate that we are all human. At the same time, this inquiry is intended to inspire us to deepen our path of objective awareness and on what we need to focus. Let yourself think of a person you respect that imbues the qualities that you lack. Verbalize their name, and feel your desire to embody more of this quality of heart.

Inquiry 3: How long can you focus on the 3 qualities that would most improve the quality of your life? Imagine situations imbued with this quality that has been lacking.

Personal Integration 3: Follow the same instructions as above in the monologue or repeating question format. Visualize your life as it is, and take a great interest in where there is a feeling of incompleteness, struggle, or withdrawal, and when that is likely to come up in life. Then spend some time saying out loud, with as much conviction as possible, how you would like to be different in these situations. Don’t be discouraged that it is hard to imagine yourself being abundant in these qualities. That is the whole point. The more difficult it is to be clear about what you would want to say, and also be vital and alive in this quality, the clearer it is that you have chosen the right limitation to focus on. Congratulate yourself, and recognize there is a great need to g repeat this exercise, and give it more consciousness in your life. Cultivating this discipline and humility is a good thing for all of us.

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Developmental Levels of Mental and Spiritual Health

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Clarifying the importance of psychological health which is being well adjusted to the world and spiritual health which is the development of essential qualities like love, peace, generosity, and compassion.

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Since 1972, Humanistic Spirituality founder Robert Strock has maintained a private spiritual and therapeutic counseling practice that specializes in purposeful living, relationships, spiritual psychology, and death and dying counseling. Humanistic Spirituality provides various spiritual workshops, guided mediations, and licensed marriage family therapists and licensed social work continuing education courses. Contact us to learn how we can help you find inner peace and spiritual awareness through our counseling, or our free guided meditations, videos, audios, writings, introspective guises and more. A warm welcome from the team at Humanistic Spirituality.